Worktop installation in Stepney

Yes. Stepney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The step between rooms is packed out first. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Unlock any rear or shared path gate and clear both the hall and the back approach so we can choose the better route on the day. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A stub wall divides the kitchen from the back lobby, and it rarely stayed where the original drawing put it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A bad floor is corrected under the carcass, never with sealant.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Rear or shared-path access is often the only way to bring a long piece in without turning it in the hall. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.

Money does not move until the template is done. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The join is polished flat before we call it done.